Just hours after President Donald Trump suggested Chicago would be the next location for a federal troop deployment like the one occurring in Washington, D.C., both Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker said the president would be illegally abusing his power if he follows through on the threat.

“The problem with the President’s approach is that it is uncoordinated, uncalled for, and unsound,” Johnson said in a statement. “Unlawfully deploying the National Guard to Chicago has the potential to inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement when we know that trust between police and residents is foundational to building safer communities.”

And in a post on the social media site X, Pritzker rejected Trump’s notion that Chicagoans were clamoring for the National Guard to patrol city streets.

“Things People are Begging for: 1. Cheaper groceries 2. No Medicaid and SNAP cuts 3. Release of the Epstein Files,” Pritzker wrote. “Things People are NOT begging for: 1. An authoritarian power grab of major cities.”

Pritzker later issued a statement saying that local police don’t want the federal intervention, and promised that “we will follow the law and stand up for the sovereignty of our state.”

“After using Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. as his testing ground for authoritarian overreach, Trump is now openly flirting with the idea of taking over other states and cities,” the governor said. “Trump’s goal is to incite fear in our communities and destabilize existing public safety efforts — all to create a justification to further abuse his power.”

The swift rebuke from both Johnson and Pritzker came as Trump answered questions in the Oval Office about the controversial deployment of 2,000 National Guard members in Washington as part of his purported crusade against big-city violence. Seemingly almost as a side thought, Trump said that “probably” Chicago would be the next city where he’d try to deploy troops to crack down on crime.

“After we do this, we’ll go to another location … Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, we’re going to straighten that out,” Trump said. “Probably that’ll be our next one after this, and it won’t even be tough. And the people in Chicago … they’re wearing red hats. African American ladies, beautiful ladies, are saying, ‘Please, President Trump, come to Chicago.’”

Trump, who routinely makes threats he doesn’t follow up on and who would face much tougher obstacles deploying troops into Chicago than he did in Washington, didn’t indicate anything substantive beyond his remarks. Still, Johnson said he took the president’s statements “seriously,” before adding that the city “has not received any formal communication from the Trump administration regarding additional federal law enforcement or military deployments to Chicago.”

Trump’s order earlier this month to send troops to the nation’s capital was panned by local officials and Democratic leaders who said the federal intervention was unnecessary — particularly as crime has dropped there and in other major cities. They also said the move could bring about dangerous clashes with civilians. But the White House maintains the crackdown has led to hundreds of arrests and made Washington safer.

The president also floated New York City as the next target after Chicago. Earlier this summer, as Pritzker referenced, Trump’s administration sent nearly 5,000 federal troops to Los Angeles during protests over federal immigration raids. That deployment triggered a legal standoff with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom over the federal government’s authority to activate troops. The courts initially sided with Newsom, but an appeals panel later blocked that order.

U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, who is running to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, made a pointed reference to Trump’s comments about “African American ladies.”

“You have no authority to claim what Black women want,” said Kelly, who is Black. “Black women have lost sons and daughters, spouses, fathers and mothers to gun violence — and experienced the horrific trauma of gun violence and domestic violence themselves — yet you have done nothing to save Black lives. In fact, bringing the National Guard into Chicago threatens Black communities that have already been overpoliced and under-invested in for generations.”

Kelly is facing U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who is also Black, as major candidates in the Senate race. Both also hammered Trump’s suggestion and vowed to stop any such effort.

The focus on Chicago being the next target for troop deployment comes as no surprise after the nation’s third-largest, strongly Democratic-leaning city has been in the White House’s crosshairs since Trump took office again in January. His administration has attacked the mayor and governor’s leadership throughout the last several months, and Chicago’s reputation among conservatives as a punching bag would make images of a National Guard deployment easy bait for his base.

Trump in June said Pritzker, who is mulling a 2028 run for president, is “probably the worst in the country” and recently called Johnson “totally incompetent” while hinting that a federal takeover of policing was necessary in Chicago, which he deemed a “disaster.” The governor and mayor, for their part, have blasted Trump’s crackdown on Democratic cities and warned that he would have no authority to do the same in Chicago.

However, Pritzker and Johnson have not revealed much about how they would handle a federal troop deployment. Last week, Johnson did not say what his plan would be if that happened besides, “Legal action will be on the table.”

Johnson was himself singled out by the White House when the president’s border czar, Tom Homan, threatened to arrest him days before Trump’s inauguration, and when the U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation into City Hall hiring practices within a day of Johnson publicly emphasizing how many Black people he’s hired in his administration. Earlier in January, Homan was joined by the TV personality Dr. Phil in a blitz of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Chicago.

Trump disparaged Chicago throughout his first term as president too, saying the city’s violence was worse than Afghanistan. The enmity is mutual; Trump got just 21% of the vote in Chicago during last November’s election against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

But a potential federal crackdown would be Trump’s biggest escalation yet. It would come after Chicago has seen multiyear declines in violence after a historic crime wave that coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest over George Floyd’s murder.

Chicago leads the nation in homicides, surpassing both Los Angeles and New York City combined, while its per capita rate is far below that of smaller cities such as St. Louis and Memphis.

So far this year, shootings in Chicago are down 36% and homicides 31% after peaking in 2021 to levels not seen in over two decades, according to Chicago Police data.

Johnson attributes that progress to the leadership of his handpicked Chicago police Supt. Larry Snelling, as well as his administration’s spending on youth employment and anti-violence programs. Those programs lean on federal grants that are in jeopardy under Trump.

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